2021-12-14 12:01:45

Strike Wave in the U.S.? Labor Historian Nelson Lichtenstein on Union Drives & Worker Revolts

As unionizing efforts have taken the U.S. by storm, we look at the history of the U.S. labor movement and how unions have acted as a bulwark against corporate power.

Worker organizing at Starbucks, Kellogg’s and Amazon shows that unions help enforce health and safety measures and protect workers who speak out.

“A working-class consciousness ebbs and flows,” says Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “A union is a way of capturing that consciousness and making it the law of the land.”

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